Cotton fires back at Biden over Iran letter

Sen. Tom Cotton is firing back at Vice President Joe Biden’s criticism of his letter to Iran, saying: What does he know about foreign policy?

“Joe Biden, as [President] Barack Obama’s own secretary of defense has said, has been wrong about nearly every foreign policy and national security decision in the last 40 years,” Cotton said Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” in a reference to former Pentagon chief Robert Gates, who ripped Biden in a tell-all memoir after leaving office.

“Moreover, if Joe Biden respects the dignity of the institution of the Senate he should be insisting that the president submit any deal to approval of the Senate, which is exactly what he did on numerous deals during his time in Senate,” Cotton said.

On Monday, the freshman senator from Arkansas, along with 46 other Republican senators, signed a letter to top Iranian leaders informing them that any nuclear deal they reach with President Obama would be “nothing more than an executive agreement” that would likely be tossed out when a new president takes office.

Biden released a strongly worded statement on Monday night, saying that the letter “is beneath the dignity of an institution I revere.”

“In 36 years in the United States Senate,” Biden said,“I cannot recall another instance in which senators wrote directly to advise another country — much less a longtime foreign adversary — that the president does not have the constitutional authority to reach a meaningful understanding with them.”

Cotton responded to Biden on Tuesday, saying that he and the other senators who signed the letter are “simply speaking for the American people.”

“The point we’re making to Iran’s leaders — who, if you talk to many of the Iran experts, will say don’t understand our Constitution — is that if Congress doesn’t approve a deal, Congress won’t accept a deal. Now or in the future,” Cotton said.

MSNBC’s hosts pressed Cotton on the idea of complete disarmament, arguing that Iran would never agree to those terms.

“I think we have to have a credible threat of military force on the table but the real alternative … to a bad deal is a better deal,” Cotton said. “With more sanctions, with confronting Iran, with only giving them the choice that would completely disarm their nuclear weapons.”

Cotton said that a “credible threat of force on the table… would only enhance the ability” of the U.S. to disarm Iran.